Before Kassym-Jomart Tokayev came to power in 2019, Kazakhstan under Nursultan Nazarbayev combined a highly centralized political system with broadly neoliberal socioeconomic policies. In this respect, the Kazakhstani model displayed certain similarities with the previous developmental trajectories of several twentieth-century Asian states, including South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, where strong centralized authority coexisted with market-oriented economic modernization and deep integration into the global economy.